AI joins us : The Surreal Intelligence

In this workshop, the principles of image-generating and image-editing AI models, such as Stable Diffusion, Flux Redux, and Qwen Edit, were explored through Surrealist games such as Collage, Exquisite Corpse, Collective Drawing, and Frottage.

Participants explored together what connects Surrealism and generative AI, not as abstract theory, but hands-on. Analog experimentation was combined with digital tools: collage, automatism, and chance were brought together with AI, opening up new questions about creativity, authorship, and the collaboration between human and machine. Participants experimented with pencil frottage and scissor collage alongside text-to-image and image-to-image processes in ComfyUI, an open-source environment for generative AI freely available to anyone.

Generative AI was explored not only as a technological revolution, but as a practice rooted deeply in the ideas of modern art. Surrealism in particular, with its techniques of automatism, collage, and distributed authorship, developed principles that resurface today at the core of machine learning. Understanding AI and its effects on human creativity, the workshop argued, requires engaging with this genealogy, a connection that remains one of the most striking blind spots in the current hype around AI, artistically, scientifically, and technologically underexplored.

No prior knowledge of AI or art was required, only curiosity.

Realized by Mert Akbal (academic researcher, Generative Arts & Design Lab and HAMLET project, HBKsaar) on 29 August 2026, as part of the "AI JOINS US" exhibition series at Stadtgalerie Saarbrücken, held during the OPEN HOUSE day accompanying the exhibition "Melancholic Machines: Daring to Play (No. 3)" by Hojin Kang.